taking.”
I boarded the 2 p.m. to Prague bleary-eyed. After Garda Jack Taylor left I’d continued with the Becherovka, but instead of putting me to sleep it only made me sick. And my 5 a.m. shower only made me feel dirtier.
Toman hadn’t returned to the flat, and I didn’t see him in the departures lounge. I didn’t know what that meant. But after most everyone had settled into their seats, he appeared at the front of the plane, red-faced, as if he’d been running. He smiled hugely as he settled next to me.
“Almost, I was late.”
I looked out the window. He smelled bad.
“I stay at friend’s last night.”
“Did your friend survive the night?”
“Ha! A writer’s sense for the humor.”
“Your other friend sends his best wishes,” I told him. “He says thank you.”
“What friend is this?”
I finally looked at him; his red cheeks glimmered with sweat. “That Garda, Jack Taylor.”
“What I tell you?” he said, then patted my knee. “Toman, he is friend for whole world.”
“You stink, Toman.”
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose. “I must to clean off this piss.”
WISHBY JOHN RICKARDS
Four days since I called in sick. I think.
I ’ve been awake for three of them straight. I think.
My fellow Gardai would piss themselves if they could see me, no doubt. Then they’d have me committed.
But they don’t know. They haven’t seen. They’re all out getting drunk, or off fucking their wives, or fucking their mistresses and lying about it to their wives, or passed out in front of their TVs in their nice safe homes while I’m
fucking
dead.
And I don’t know if even I believe it.
It started with Michael. A mental case, low-grade nut. We have quite a few. A handful of pedophiles, stalkers, minor assaults. Care in the community jobs, not criminal enough to be locked up for good, criminal enough to be in and out of the cells on a regular basis. Since jail seems to do fuckall by way of curing them-worse, many come out of it even more damaged than they went in-my own policy is not to arrest. Talk, threaten, watch, but don’t arrest if possible. Jail only makes them more of a risk to everyone in the long run.
Some of these guys are homeless, but not Michael. It’s a shithole of a flat, though, overlooking the railway tracks not far from where they cross the Tolka, north of Dublin’s city center. Building that smells of boiled vegetables and cat piss. Walls the color of boiled vegetables and cat piss.
“That woman hasn’t been poisoning your kitten, Michael. She doesn’t even know who you are. She wouldn’t know how to poison a kitten even if she wanted to.”
“Could swear I’ve seen her-”
“No, you haven’t. She hasn’t done a thing. Trust me on this, okay? Jesus, they train me for this sort of thing, and believe me, if she was guilty I’d know and I’d have dealt with her. You’ve got to stop yelling at the woman and threatening her, Michael.”
Sullen look. A child being unfairly chided. A flash of malice. I wish I could make him shut up. I wish I had some way to frighten him into behaving. Then, suddenly, there it is.
So I do it. I drop the threat. Let the genie out of the bottle.
“And you listen good to me, Michael. You leave that woman alone from now on, or else I’ll send your name, address, and photo to Iron Kurt’s Gay Nazi website.”
Let me explain. I have a friend, Curt, who’s funny, erudite, can hold his drink remarkably well, and happens to be gay. One night in Fallon’s, the conversation turns to gay rights and marriage, a subject which he understandably feels strongly about. He speaks his piece, and someone else makes some comment about him being a “facist homo” or something. Funny in its stupidity. And so the remark resurfaces and transforms, blossoming into something so much more.
It helps that there’s been trouble with a couple of neo-Nazi crackpots in the city on TV recently, even with the NSRUS pulling out of Ireland. Nazis make the best bad guys. Ask Indiana Jones. And I see a twitch of fear or homophobia in Michael’s eyes.
“I’ll do it,” I tell him. “And you know what’ll happen then…”
Of course, his mind fills in the blank with its own worst fears. He promises to be good.
And over the next few weeks, he is. And I trot out the same threat to other lunatics I have to deal with. And they don’t see me as a punisher. Iron Kurt is the punisher. I’m just the messenger. So they don’t even resent me for it.
My fellow Gardai find the whole thing fucking funny. Some of them start using Kurt themselves. And Dublin sleeps safer at night. Kurt’s out there, watching over them. A specter in the fog blowing in off the harbor, creeping upriver. A paper tiger keeping evil at bay.
One afternoon, I see William, one of our deranged, sitting in the doorway of a boarded-up shop with an Iron Cross badge pinned proudly to his battered old blue Leinster rugby top. Next to him is a scratched metal strongbox.
“Hey, William.”
“It’s… you’re gonna beat me.”
“Leave it alone, William. What’s in the box?”
“They’re mine, see.”
“Fine. But show me what you’ve got.”
“It’s private. Mine.”
“Last time we had this conversation, you had a petrol bomb on you. I just want to make sure you don’t have another one. Anything else, you can keep.”
He thinks, pops open the box. Inside, an untidy pile of black fur.
“Why are you carrying a bunch of dead rats around?” I ask.
“They pay me. It’s my deal. Not yours.”
“I’ve got no ambitions of being a rat-catcher. Who pays?”
“The big red building down Castleforbes Road. Food warehouse. To set traps. Ten cents a rat.”
“And you get them from somewhere else, and they pay for them.”
“Yeah. It’s a good job.”
“Good for you. What’s with the Iron Cross?” I point at his chest.
“It’s protection, is what. Keith saw Iron Kurt.”
I try not to smile. “Yeah?”
“And he said, you wear stuff like this and you’ll be okay.”
“Unless you’ve been posted on his website.”
“Well, yeah.”
“While we’re on the subject, you’re keeping away from that playground, right?”
He nods vigorously. “Yeah. Never meant to do anything.”
“Did Keith say what Iron Kurt looked like?”
“Yeah. A big guy, tall, built like a brick shithouse. Bald. With a beard. Tattoos all over.”
The real Curt is 5'5'' and built for comfort, not speed. Again, I stifle a smile. “Yeah, that sounds right. You’d better stay out of trouble, huh?”
Not long after, I see Keith himself. The shopping trolley that holds his worldly possessions has a bunch of plastic German soldiers on string looped all the way around it like fairy lights. Now that I’m looking for it, I start to notice similar items on most of the other nutcases in my patch.
